THE DEATH OF DARIUS.
B.C. 330
March to Persepolis.--Reckless cruelty.--The banquet.--Thais
proposes to burn the Persian palace.--Conflagration of the
palace.--Sublimity of the scene.--Olympias.--Her letters to
Alexander.--Sysigambis.--Alexander's kindness to her.--Darius at
Ecbatana.--His speech to his army.--Conspiracy against Darius.--Bessus
and his confederates.--Advance of Alexander.--Retreat of Darius.--The
Caspian Gates.--Pursuit of Darius.--Foraging parties.--The pursuit
continued.--Alexander stops to rest his army.--Want of
water.--Disregarded by Alexander.--The pursuit grows more
exciting.--Guides employed.--The Persians overtaken.--Murder of
Darius.--Sufferings of Darius.--Treachery of friends.--Darius
found.--Sufferings from thirst.--Darius calls for water.--The
interpreter.--Darius's message to Alexander.--Affecting
scene.--Alexander's grief at Darius's death.--He sends the body
to Sysigambis.--Crossing the Oxus.--Capture of the traitor
Bessus.--Mutilation of Bessus.--He is sent to Sysigambis.--Terrible
punishment of Bessus.
Alexander's march from Susa to Persepolis was less a march than a
triumphal progress. He felt the pride and elation so naturally
resulting from success very strongly. The moderation and forbearance
which had characterized him in his earlier years, gradually
disappeared as he became great and powerful. He was intoxicated with
his success. He became haughty, vain, capricious, and cruel. As he
approached Persepolis, he conceived the idea that, as this city was
the capital and center of the Persian monarchy, and, as such, the
point from which had emanated all the Persian hostility to Greece, he
owed it some signal retribution. Accordingly, although the inhabitants
made no opposition to his entrance, he marched in with the phalanx
formed, and gave the soldiers liberty to kill and plunder as they
pleased.
There was another very striking instance of the capricious
recklessness now beginning to appear in Alexander's character, which
occurred soon after he had taken possession of Persepolis. He was
giving a great banquet to his friends, the officers of the army, and
to Persians of distinction among those who had submitted to him. There
was, among other women at this banquet, a very beautiful and
accomplished female named Thais. Alexander made her his favorite and
companion, though she was not his wife. Thais did all in her power to
captivate and please Alexander during the feast by her vivacity, her
wit, her adroit attentions to him, and the display of her charms, and
at length, when he himself, as well as the other guests, were excited
with wine, she asked him to allow her to have the pleasure of going
herself and setting fire, with her own hands, to the great palace of
the Persian kings in the city. Thais was a native of Attica in Greece,
a kingdom of which Athens was the capital. Xerxes, who had built the
great palace of Persepolis, had formerly invaded Greece and had burned
Athens, and now Thais desired to burn his palace in Persepolis, to
gratify her revenge, by making of its conflagration an evening
spectacle to entertain the Macedonian party after their supper.
Alexander agreed to the proposal, and the whole company moved forward.
Taking the torches from the banqueting halls, they sallied forth,
alarming the city with their shouts, and with the flashing of the
lights they bore. The plan of Thais was carried fully into effect,
every half-intoxicated guest assisting, by putting fire to the immense
pile wherever they could get access to it. They performed the
barbarous deed with shouts of vengeance and exultation.
There is, however, something very solemn and awful in a great
conflagration at night, and very few incendiaries can gaze upon the
fury of the lurid and frightful flames which they have caused to
ascend without some misgivings and some remorse. Alexander was sobered
by the grand and sublime, but terrible spectacle. He was awed by it.
He repented. He ordered the fire to be extinguished; but it was too
late. The palace was destroyed, and one new blot, which has never
since been effaced, was cast upon Alexander's character and fame.
And yet, notwithstanding these increasing proofs of pride and cruelty,
which were beginning to be developed, Alexander still preserved some
of the early traits of character which had made him so great a
favorite in the commencement of his career. He loved his mother, and
sent her presents continually from the treasures which were falling
all the time into his possession. She was a woman of a proud,
imperious, and ungovernable character, and she made Antipater, whom
Alexander had left in command in Macedon, infinite trouble. She wanted
to exercise the powers of government herself, and was continually
urging this. Alexander would not comply with these wishes, but he paid
her personally every attention in his power, and bore all her
invectives and reproaches with great patience and good humor. At one
time he received a long letter from Antipater, full of complaints
against her; but Alexander, after reading it, said that they were
heavy charges it was true, but that a single one of his mother's tears
would outweigh ten thousand such accusations.
Olympias used to write very frequently to Alexander, and in these
letters she would criticise and discuss his proceedings, and make
comments upon the characters and actions of his generals. Alexander
kept these letters very secret, never showing them to any one. One
day, however, when he was reading one of these letters, Hephaestion,
the personal friend and companion who has been already several times
mentioned, came up, half playfully, and began to look over his
shoulder. Alexander went on, allowing him to read, and then, when the
letter was finished he took the signet ring from his finger and
pressed it upon Hephaestion's lips, a signal for silence and secrecy.
Alexander was very kind to Sysigambis, the mother of Darius, and also
to Darius's children. He would not give these unhappy captives their
liberty, but in every other respect he treated them with the greatest
possible kindness and consideration. He called Sysigambis mother,
loaded her with presents--presents, it is true, which he had plundered
from her son, but to which it was considered, in those days, that he
had acquired a just and perfect title. When he reached Susa, he
established Sysigambis and the children there in great state. This had
been their usual residence in most seasons of the year, when not at
Persepolis, so that here they were, as it were, at home. Ecbatana[F]
was, as has been already mentioned, further north, among the
mountains. After the battle of Arbela, while Alexander marched to
Babylon and to Susa, Darius had fled to Ecbatana, and was now there,
his family being thus at one of the royal palaces under the command of
the conqueror, and he himself independent, but insecure, in the
other. He had with him about forty thousand men, who still remained
faithful to his fallen fortunes. Among these were several thousand
Greeks, whom he had collected in Asia Minor and other Grecian
countries, and whom he had attached to his service by means of pay.
[Footnote F: The modern Ispahan.]
He called the officers of his army together, and explained to them the
determination that he had come to in respect to his future movements.
"A large part of those," said he, "who formerly served as officers of
my government have abandoned me in my adversity, and gone over to
Alexander's side. They have surrendered to him the towns, and
citadels, and provinces which I intrusted to their fidelity. You alone
remain faithful and true. As for myself, I might yield to the
conqueror, and have him assign to me some province or kingdom to
govern as his subordinate; but I will never submit to such a
degradation. I can die in the struggle, but never will yield. I will
wear no crown which another puts upon my brow, nor give up my right to
reign over the empire of my ancestors till I give up my life. If you
agree with me in this determination, let us act energetically upon it.
We have it in our power to terminate the injuries we are suffering, or
else to avenge them."
The army responded most cordially to this appeal. They were ready,
they said, to follow him wherever he should lead. All this apparent
enthusiasm, however, was very delusive and unsubstantial. A general
named Bessus, combining with some other officers in the army,
conceived the plan of seizing Darius and making him a prisoner, and
then taking command of the army himself. If Alexander should pursue
him, and be likely to overtake and conquer him, he then thought that,
by giving up Darius as a prisoner, he could stipulate for liberty and
safety, and perhaps great rewards, both for himself and for those who
acted with him. If, on the other hand, they should succeed in
increasing their own forces so as to make head against Alexander, and
finally to drive him away, then Bessus was to usurp the throne, and
dispose of Darius by assassinating him, or imprisoning him for life in
some remote and solitary castle.
Bessus communicated his plans, very cautiously at first, to the
leading officers of the army. The Greek soldiers were not included in
the plot. They, however, heard and saw enough to lead them to suspect
what was in preparation. They warned Darius, and urged him to rely
upon them more than he had done; to make them his body-guard; and to
pitch his tent in their part of the encampment. But Darius declined
these proposals. He would not, he said, distrust and abandon his
countrymen, who were his natural protectors, and put himself in the
hands of strangers. He would not betray and desert his friends in
anticipation of their deserting and betraying him.
In the mean time, as Alexander advanced toward Ecbatana, Darius and
his forces retreated from it toward the eastward, through the great
tract of country lying south of the Caspian Sea. There is a
mountainous region here, with a defile traversing it, through which it
would be necessary for Darius to pass. This defile was called the
Caspian Gates,[G] the name referring to rocks on each side. The
marching of an army through a narrow and dangerous defile like this
always causes detention and delay, and Alexander hastened forward in
hopes to overtake Darius before he should reach it. He advanced with
such speed that only the strongest and most robust of his army could
keep up. Thousands, worn out with exertion and toil, were left behind,
and many of the horses sank down by the road side, exhausted with heat
and fatigue, to die. Alexander pressed desperately on with all who
were able to follow.
[Footnote G: _Pylae Caspiae_ on the map, which means the Caspian Gates.]
It was all in vain, however; it was too late when he arrived at the
pass. Darius had gone through with all his army. Alexander stopped to
rest his men, and to allow time for those behind to come up. He then
went on for a couple of days, when he encamped, in order to send out
foraging parties--that is to say, small detachments, dispatched to
explore the surrounding country in search of grain and other food for
the horses. Food for the horses of an army being too bulky to be
transported far, has to be collected day by day from the neighborhood
of the line of march.
While halting for these foraging parties to return, a Persian nobleman
came into the camp, and informed Alexander that Darius and the forces
accompanying him were encamped about two days' march in advance, but
that Bessus was in command--the conspiracy having been successful, and
Darius having been deposed and made a prisoner. The Greeks, who had
adhered to their fidelity, finding that all the army were combined
against them, and that they were not strong enough to resist, had
abandoned the Persian camp, and had retired to the mountains, where
they were awaiting the result.
Alexander determined to set forward immediately in pursuit of Bessus
and his prisoner. He did not wait for the return of the foraging
parties. He selected the ablest and most active, both of foot soldiers
and horsemen, ordered them to take two days' provisions, and then set
forth with them that very evening. The party pressed on all that
night, and the next day till noon. They halted till evening, and then
set forth again. Very early the next morning they arrived at the
encampment which the Persian nobleman had described. They found the
remains of the camp-fires, and all the marks usually left upon a spot
which has been used as the bivouac of an army. The army itself,
however, was gone.
The pursuers were now too much fatigued to go any further without
rest. Alexander remained here, accordingly, through the day, to give
his men and his horses refreshment and repose. That night they set
forward again, and the next day at noon they arrived at another
encampment of the Persians, which they had left scarcely twenty-four
hours before. The officers of Alexander's army were excited and
animated in the highest degree, as they found themselves thus drawing
so near to the great object of their pursuit. They were ready for any
exertions, any privation and fatigue, any measures, however
extraordinary, to accomplish their end.
Alexander inquired of the inhabitants of the place whether there were
not some shorter road than the one along which the enemy were moving.
There was one cross-road, but it led through a desolate and desert
tract of land, destitute of water. In the march of an army, as the men
are always heavily loaded with arms and provisions, and water can not
be carried, it is always considered essential to choose routes which
will furnish supplies of water by the way. Alexander, however,
disregarded this consideration here, and prepared at once to push into
the cross-road with a small detachment. He had been now two years
advancing from Macedon into the heart of Asia, always in quest of
Darius as his great opponent and enemy. He had conquered his armies,
taken his cities, plundered his palaces, and made himself master of
his whole realm. Still, so long as Darius himself remained at liberty
and in the field, no victories could be considered as complete. To
capture Darius himself would be the last and crowning act of his
conquest. He had now been pursuing him for eighteen hundred miles,
advancing slowly from province to province, and from kingdom to
kingdom. During all this time the strength of his flying foe had been
wasting away. His armies had been broken up, his courage and hope had
gradually failed, while the animation and hope of the pursuer had been
gathering fresh and increasing strength from his successes, and were
excited to wild enthusiasm now, as the hour for the final consummation
of all his desires seemed to be drawing nigh.
Guides were ordered to be furnished by the inhabitants, to show the
detachment the way across the solitary and desert country. The
detachment was to consist of horsemen entirely, that they might
advance with the utmost celerity. To get as efficient a corps as
possible, Alexander dismounted five hundred of the cavalry, and gave
their horses to five hundred men--officers and others--selected for
their strength and courage from among the foot soldiers. All were
ambitious of being designated for this service. Besides the honor of
being so selected, there was an intense excitement, as usual toward
the close of a chase, to arrive at the end.
This body of horsemen were ready to set out in the evening. Alexander
took the command, and, following the guides, they trotted off in the
direction which the guides indicated. They traveled all night. When
the day dawned, they saw, from an elevation to which they had
attained, the body of the Persian troops moving at a short distance
before them, foot soldiers, chariots, and horsemen pressing on
together in great confusion and disorder.
As soon as Bessus and his company found that their pursuers were close
upon them, they attempted at first to hurry forward, in the vain hope
of still effecting their escape. Darius was in a chariot. They urged
this chariot on, but it moved heavily. Then they concluded to abandon
it, and they called upon Darius to mount a horse and ride off with
them, leaving the rest of the army and the baggage to its fate. But
Darius refused. He said he would rather trust himself in the hands of
Alexander than in those of such traitors as they. Rendered desperate
by their situation, and exasperated by this reply, Bessus and his
confederates thrust their spears into Darius's body, as he sat in his
chariot, and then galloped away. They divided into different parties,
each taking a different road. Their object in doing this was to
increase their chances of escape by confusing Alexander in his plans
for pursuing them. Alexander pressed on toward the ground which the
enemy were abandoning, and sent off separate detachments after the
various divisions of the flying army.
In the mean time Darius remained in his chariot wounded and bleeding.
He was worn out and exhausted, both in body and mind, by his
complicated sufferings and sorrows. His kingdom lost; his family in
captivity; his beloved wife in the grave, where the sorrows and
sufferings of separation from her husband had borne her; his cities
sacked; his palaces and treasures plundered; and now he himself, in
the last hour of his extremity, abandoned and betrayed by all in whom
he had placed his confidence and trust, his heart sunk within him in
despair. At such a time the soul turns from traitorous friends to an
open foe with something like a feeling of confidence and attachment.
Darius's exasperation against Bessus was so intense, that his
hostility to Alexander became a species of friendship in comparison.
He felt that Alexander was a sovereign like himself, and would have
some sympathy and fellow-feeling for a sovereign's misfortunes. He
thought, too, of his mother, his wife, and his children, and the
kindness with which Alexander had treated them went to his heart. He
lay there, accordingly, faint and bleeding in his chariot, and looking
for the coming of Alexander as for that of a protector and friend, the
only one to whom he could now look for any relief in the extremity of
his distress.
The Macedonians searched about in various places, thinking it possible
that in the sudden dispersion of the enemy Darius might have been left
behind. At last the chariot in which he was lying was found. Darius
was in it, pierced with spears. The floor of the chariot was covered
with blood. They raised him a little, and he spoke. He called for
water.
Men wounded and dying on the field of battle are tormented always with
an insatiable and intolerable thirst, the manifestations of which
constitute one of the greatest horrors of the scene. They cry
piteously to all who pass to bring them water, or else to kill them.
They crawl along the ground to get at the canteens of their dead
companions, in hopes to find, remaining in them, some drops to drink;
and if there is a little brook meandering through the battle-field,
its bed gets filled and choked up with the bodies of those who crawled
there, in their agony, to quench their horrible thirst, and die.
Darius was suffering this thirst. It bore down and silenced, for the
time, every other suffering, so that his first cry, when his enemies
came around him with shouts of exultation, was not for his life, not
for mercy, not for relief from the pain and anguish of his wounds--he
begged them to give him some water.
He spoke through an interpreter. The interpreter was a Persian
prisoner whom the Macedonian army had taken some time before, and who
had learned the Greek language in the Macedonian camp. Anticipating
some occasion for his services, they had brought him with them now,
and it was through him that Darius called for water. A Macedonian
soldier went immediately to get some. Others hurried away in search of
Alexander, to bring him to the spot where the great object of his
hostility, and of his long and protracted pursuit, was dying.
Darius received the drink. He then said that he was extremely glad
that they had an interpreter with them, who could understand him, and
bear his message to Alexander. He had been afraid that he should have
had to die without being able to communicate what he had to say. "Tell
Alexander," said he, then, "that I feel under the strongest
obligations to him which I can now never repay, for his kindness to my
wife, my mother, and my children. He not only spared their lives, but
treated them with the greatest consideration and care, and did all in
his power to make them happy. The last feeling in my heart is
gratitude to him for these favors. I hope now that he will go on
prosperously, and finish his conquests as triumphantly as he has begun
them." He would have made one last request, he added, if he had
thought it necessary, and that was, that Alexander would pursue the
traitor Bessus, and avenge the murder he had committed; but he was
sure that Alexander would do this of his own accord, as the punishment
of such treachery was an object of common interest for every king.
Darius then took Polystratus, the Macedonian who had brought him the
water, by the hand, saying, "Give Alexander thy hand as I now give
thee mine; it is the pledge of my gratitude and affection."
Darius was too weak to say much more. They gathered around him,
endeavoring to sustain his strength until Alexander should arrive; but
it was all in vain. He sank gradually, and soon ceased to breathe.
Alexander came up a few minutes after all was over. He was at first
shocked at the spectacle before him, and then overwhelmed with grief.
He wept bitterly. Some compunctions of conscience may have visited his
heart at seeing thus before him the ruin he had made. Darius had never
injured him or done him any wrong, and yet here he lay, hunted to
death by a persevering and relentless hostility, for which his
conqueror had no excuse but his innate love of dominion over his
fellow-men. Alexander spread his own military cloak over the dead
body. He immediately made arrangements for having the body embalmed,
and then sent it to Susa, for Sysigambis, in a very costly coffin, and
with a procession of royal magnificence. He sent it to her that she
might have the satisfaction of seeing it deposited in the tombs of the
Persian kings. What a present! The killer of a son sending the dead
body, in a splendid coffin, to the mother, as a token of respectful
regard!
Alexander pressed on to the northward and eastward in pursuit of
Bessus, who had soon collected the scattered remains of his army, and
was doing his utmost to get into a posture of defense. He did not,
however, overtake him till he had crossed the Oxus, a large river
which will be found upon the map, flowing to the northward and
westward into the Caspian Sea. He had great difficulty in crossing
this river, as it was too deep to be forded, and the banks and bottom
were so sandy and yielding that he could not make the foundations of
bridges stand. He accordingly made floats and rafts, which were
supported by skins made buoyant by inflation, or by being stuffed with
straw and hay. After getting his army, which had been in the mean time
greatly re-enforced and strengthened, across this river, he moved on.
The generals under Bessus, finding all hope of escape failing them,
resolved on betraying him as he had betrayed his commander. They sent
word to Alexander that if he would send forward a small force where
they should indicate, they would give up Bessus to his hands.
Alexander did so, intrusting the command to an officer named Ptolemy.
Ptolemy found Bessus in a small walled town whither he had fled for
refuge, and easily took him prisoner. He sent back word to Alexander
that Bessus was at his disposal, and asked for orders. The answer was,
"Put a rope around his neck and send him to me."
When the wretched prisoner was brought into Alexander's presence,
Alexander demanded of him how he could have been so base as to have
seized, bound, and at last murdered his kinsman and benefactor. It is
a curious instance in proof of the permanence and stability of the
great characteristics of human nature, through all the changes of
civilization and lapses of time, that Bessus gave the same answer that
wrong-doers almost always give when brought to account for their
wrongs. He laid the fault upon his accomplices and friends. It was not
his act, it was theirs.
Alexander ordered him to be publicly scourged; then he caused his face
to be mutilated in a manner customary in those days, when a tyrant
wished to stamp upon his victim a perpetual mark of infamy. In this
condition, and with a mind in an agony of suspense and fear at the
thought of worse tortures which he knew were to come, Alexander sent
him as a second present to Sysigambis, to be dealt with, at Susa, as
her revenge might direct. She inflicted upon him the most extreme
tortures, and finally, when satiated with the pleasure of seeing him
suffer, the story is that they chose four very elastic trees, growing
at a little distance from each other, and bent down the tops of them
toward the central point between them. They fastened the exhausted
and dying Bessus to these trees, one limb of his body to each, and
then releasing the stems from their confinement, they flew upward,
tearing the body asunder, each holding its own dissevered portion, as
if in triumph, far over the heads of the multitude assembled to
witness the spectacle.